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Value and validity of neonatal disease severity scoring systems

¹ Nottingham University Hospitals Trust, Neonatal Unit, Nottingham City Hospital, Nottingham, UK
² Department of Health Sciences, University of Leicester, Leicester, UK

Correspondence to:
Professor D Field, Department of Health Sciences, University of Leicester, 22–28 Princess Road West, Leicester LE1 6TP, UK; david.field@uhl-tr.nhs.uk

Accepted 19 September 2007

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

For those involved in neonatal care the concept of risk adjustment, in the informal sense, is part of everyday life. We regularly talk to parents about the risk of death in their baby if he or she is born at a particular gestation. Similarly we are aware that the risk of death as we perceive it can be weighted by other events such as being born with particularly low Apgar scores. The disease severity scoring systems that exist in neonatal care have developed through a process that formalises the assessment of the risks attached to a particular baby. Archives of Disease in Childhood has published previously a review of how such scores are derived with a commentary on some of the most widely used systems.¹

The use of disease severity scores arose first in other specialties primarily as a means of allowing comparison between heterogeneous groups of patients. For example . . . [Full text of this article]